There will be no Apple TV at WWDC 2105

It’s that time again — when the Apple people take the stage their Worldwide Developer Conference to fire up the developer community, trot out some new tricks for old products, and, hopefully, announce some brand new ones.

Because apps on the device have limited animation and the software takes several seconds to load, Mr Ryu, a founder of Impending, which makes mobile games, said he was constrained in terms of what programs he could create for the watch. Apart from more powerful watch apps, Apple’s developer conference is also set to showcase software advancements for OS X, the Mac operating system, and iOS, the mobile operating system powering iPhones and iPads. In addition, Apple plans to unveil a new streaming music service it developed with Beats, the music company it acquired for US$3 billion (S$4 billion) last year, said people briefed on the situation, who declined to be identified because the details were confidential. Apple, which introduced the watch in April after months of promotion, is selling the device in nine countries and will expand that distribution to another seven countries this month.

Drilling down a bit deeper, the new music subscription service, which will be something like Spotify and cost $10 a month, will focus much more on curated content than Apple has in the past. Our source in Los Angeles says DJs will include “all Jimmy’s buddies,” meaning friends of Jimmy Iovine; this could mean anybody from Dre to Bono to anybody signed to Interscope during Iovine’s time at the label. Last September, Apple released an iOS update that broke the iPhone’s fingerprint sensor and caused some users to lose mobile service, among other issues.

Apple will, in essence, be offering something that looks much more like traditional radio than its unpopular iTunes Radio service. iTunes Radio is little more than a very limited Pandora clone that uses algorithms to select music for its streams. The company will make under-the-hood improvements to iOS and OS X — for example, mobile apps will be able to run more efficiently, which could help improve battery life, these people said. Sales of Mac computers, while generating a small portion of Apple’s revenue, remain a bright spot for the company, even as the rest of the PC industry shrinks. Last quarter, Apple strengthened its overall Mac sales, thanks in large part to its momentum in China, where Mac sales grew 31 per cent from the same period a year ago. HomeKit provides a technology language that manufacturers can use to make their HomeKit-certified products talk to a common, Apple-flavored integration and control platform.

The two main points of control of HomeKit devices in the home will be a mobile app baked into iOS 9 and the Apple TV (Apple TV got HomeKit support last year with the arrival of iOS 8.1). An earlier Re/code report said Apple’s failure to reach content-licensing agreements with some of the major video rights holders makes a WWDC announcement of a new subscription TV service impossible, too.

Apple has reportedly wanted to offer a subscription video service for a long time, possibly as far back as the Jobs era, but it has never been able to reach suitable terms with rights holders such as TV networks and sports leagues. VentureBeat sources say that Apple is under pressure to add significant improvements to the existing iPhone experience, and it may try to do that in iOS 9.

One source with knowledge of Apple’s plans says that iPhone users have been complaining that there aren’t more multitasking capabilities, like a split-screen mode, especially on the larger screens of the iPhone 6 Plus and iPads. Samsung and other Apple rivals have already added multitasking functionality to their devices, and Apple — in typical “fast follower” style — is likely to do the same. Gurman also believes that the new OS could contain Control Center, a panel that emerges from the left side of the screen and contains key functions from the Menu Bar as well as some music controls.

We’ll likely see a few new SDKs announced for developers, and Apple will provide a preview of new features in its popular Swift development language. Google Now searches and analyzes data on the host device to understand the user’s daily events and habits, then proactively offers reminders, suggestions, and other relevant information. She can be great for things like setting an alarm on a phone or getting local weather, but she isn’t so smart when it comes to understanding the context in which the user is asking a question or giving a command. Google raised the bar even higher last week with the announcement of Now on Tap, a new feature in Android M (coming out later this year) that gives the user contextually relevant information. For instance, a friend might mention a restaurant in a text conversation, and the user can just press and hold to see directions to the place, its prices, and other information.

Brian Chen at the New York Times reported shortly before Google I/O that both Google’s Android Pay and Apple Pay would soon add the ability to process rewards program credits. It’s also possible that we could hear announcements about Apple’s car platform (CarPlay), its health platform (HealthKit), new Xcode developer tools, a Safari upgrade — who knows?